Widow's Welcome

by D. K. Fields

  ‘Nicholas Ento’s lodgings, in Derringate?’

  Cora gestured for her to continue.

  ‘Sergeant Hearst gave me the address. It’s on Teilo Street. Not much to report of the room itself. Very plain, very sparse, very little of the man at all, really.’

  ‘No more than he’d carry on horseback. And his last movements?’

  ‘The woman who runs the lodging house, a Mrs Kettleby, she says she saw Ento get into a coach on the night of the murder.’

  ‘A late coach, from outside the lodging house?’ Cora said.

  ‘That’s right. Last time she saw him, she said.’

  ‘And what time was that exactly?’

  ‘A little after midnight,’ Jenkins said.

  Cora felt her spirits lift, cutting through the tiredness she’d felt since being at the Opening Ceremony the night before. This was a chance, a lead.

  She strode past the door to the briefing room and headed for her office.

  ‘But,’ Jenkins said, running to keep up with her, ‘the landlady says it was too dark to see anything of the coach or driver.’

  ‘And this landlady – what’s her name again?’

  ‘Mrs Kettleby.’

  ‘Does this Mrs Kettleby have any idea where Ento was headed?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  They’d reached her office.

  ‘Where shall I put these?’ Jenkins said, proffering the ’sheets.

  ‘On the desk.’

  Jenkins eyed the mess of pastry wrappers, overflowing ashtrays and yet more pennysheets that were scattered across the desk. ‘Are you sure—’

  ‘The landlady,’ Cora said. ‘Put it in a report.’

  Jenkins set the ’sheets down and slipped into the corridor. There was a lump beneath the morning’s editions, and when Cora shifted them aside she found a jar beneath.

  A glass jar that held a teaspoon of red-white dirt. The dirt she’d collected from the alley where Ento was found.

  She was still none the wiser as to what it was, or if it even had a part in the story of Ento’s death. It was probably no more useful than the pastry wrappers on the floor. She looked around the small room with all its mess. It was a far cry from the gilded lavishness of Garnuck House and the Opening Ceremony. Thank the Audience for that.

  There were only a few constables in the briefing room. They looked up briefly at her arrival, then carried on talking. Latecomer’s luck, they’d left some coffee in the pot. She poured herself a cup.

  The coach was a start. Nicholas Ento, the Wayward storyteller, the man with a whole realm’s hopes firmly on his shoulders, had been going somewhere the night he was murdered. Going somewhere and, chances were, meeting someone. In Cora’s experience a late coach either meant unsavoury habits or a romance best kept private. Each was interesting in its own way, but she didn’t yet know enough about Ento to guess which was more likely. His being dumped in an alleyway behind Hawksley’s whorehouse might’ve meant something, if Hawksley and the whores weren’t certain no Wayward had paid a visit that night.

  ‘I heard it’s about a dog,’ one of the constables said.

  Cora looked up from the black, secretive surface of her coffee. The two constables were deep in discussion.

  ‘Where’d you hear?’

  ‘It’s a dog, goes mad, see? Because they take it to the middle of that lake of theirs.’

  ‘But their dogs like the water, don’t they?’

  ‘It’s not one of their dogs.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a funny one. I was hoping it would have laughs.’

  ‘That’ll be the Seeder one.’

  She was about to give them some incredibly long odds on a Seeder story making anyone laugh, when the desk sergeant appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Detective Gorderheim?’

  Lester. That was his name.

  ‘Gig out front for you,’ Sergeant Lester said.

  ‘Gig?’

  ‘That’s right. Casker fella, it is.’

  That got the two constables’ attention. One opened his mouth but Cora held up a hand to stop him.

  ‘It won’t be about a dog,’ she said.

  *

  Finnuc was waiting beside the gig. He wasn’t in his uniform. Instead, he was wearing the ridiculous sleeveless shirts and loose trousers that Caskers seemed to favour, even when they weren’t working a barge. It wasn’t that warm yet.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d show,’ Cora said.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you were really a detective, but you’ve got the coat and everything.’

  ‘The same coat I was wearing last night?’ she said. ‘Last night when you didn’t realise I was a detective.’

  He grinned. ‘Once you know what you’re looking at…’

  ‘Wouldn’t want people mistaking me for anything else. Just like you and that… vest?’

  ‘This vest will get us meat worth eating,’ he said, ‘and sight of the Hook before sundown.’

  ‘Where are the Hooks this year?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you like surprises?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you should read your pennysheets.’

  Cora got into the gig, ignoring his offer of help. The gig rocked as the Casker sat beside her. He called to the Clotham’s driver and they lurched into the road. Sitting next to Finnuc, she had to admit he did have arms worth showing off – and not just because of the swirling ink all over them. And he smelled of sandalwood, which she liked, but he’d used too much.

  She took out her bindle tin and, despite the bouncing and jostling, rolled and offered him one. When he made to refuse, she insisted.

  ‘I don’t like being in anyone’s debt,’ she said. ‘Anyone not in the black-and-white, anyway.’

  The city rolled by. Everything looked so normal, so innocent, by day. Shops, street sweepers, lines of Seminary children led by a teacher. It wasn’t the Fenest she knew.

  ‘Tell me about yourself, Finnuc,’ she said, moving closer to hear him over the sounds of the road.

  ‘Ain’t much to tell.’

  ‘Then tell me a story.’

  ‘I’m no storyteller, and for good reason.’

  ‘Seems we’re short a ’teller,’ she said.

  ‘My life’s not nearly as exciting as yours, Detective.’

  ‘So lie.’

  ‘All right.’ He made a show of fidgeting until he was ready. ‘I wasn’t born in Fenest. I can tell that comes as a shock. But I wasn’t raised in Bordair, on the Cask, or on a barge neither. My mother died birthing me. My father did his best, though things were complicated. See, my mother was not his wife. He wouldn’t be tied to any one berth, so to speak, and still won’t; only married to get a stake in a barge. His wife didn’t like him straying, she was more of a traditionalist, so as soon as he told her that I was his son – and tell her he did – she set us down on the river bank and waved goodbye. As Exiled as the Washerwoman.

  ‘So I started life as a Casker baby on a Seeder farm. But Pa, he was no good at farming. It wasn’t the hard work, he was plenty used to that, but he had no patience with the growing of things and seeing the same patches of earth day in, day out. As far as I can remember, I liked it. Those early years I saw the seasons in a way I haven’t since: the beginning and end of things, life and death, everything.

  ‘I had a hard time with the other children, but that was to be expected. Never went too far, though I had more accidents and broken bones than was normal for a farm, and farms are dangerous enough at the best of times.

  ‘Just as I was getting big enough to hold my own, my pa decided he was done. I was ten, maybe eleven, and we’d both worked long enough to save pennies into marks. I thought we’d be going back to river life, the way he talked about it. He was always saying “on a barge” this and “we Caskers” that. I’ve asked him plenty of times since, but he still can’t tell me why we went north instead of south, why Fenest instead of Bordair.

  ‘The capital w
as hard in a different way. On both of us. I was getting bigger by the day – apparently my mother had been a real bruiser too. In certain parts of the city that gets you noticed. I started working for the wrong kinds of people and it wasn’t long before the constables caught up with me. It wasn’t the Steppes for me, but there are plenty of roads and bridges and walls that folks want built with free labour here in Fenest. Lucky for me it was an election year, and who had become the Casker Chambers but my pa’s old wife, Captain Tennworth. The Faithful Companion had a real chuckle at that, I’m sure. Captain Tennworth felt, I don’t know, a kind of guilt maybe? Enough to cross the right palms and get me free and, just as importantly, a job with the Commission.’

  Cora re-lit her bindleleaf. ‘How much of that is true?’

  ‘You’re right, I’m really Torn, with metal lungs so I can manage your weak, clean air.’

  ‘Maybe you’re not a good storyteller, but you’re a pretty good liar.’

  Nine

  ‘Can’t get any closer to the Hook,’ the driver said.

  Cora looked out her side of the gig and saw the truth of it – coaches and carriages, gigs and carts, all sizes and all shapes blocking the road.

  ‘Might as well walk from here,’ Finnuc said. He paid the driver, and added a fair tip given the trouble that traffic was going to be. When she mentioned it, Finnuc just said, ‘I know what it’s like to work like that.’

  They picked their way through the stationary traffic and joined the busy pavement. They were alongside the Stave; beyond a low wall the river made its slow course through the city. People and river alike moved placidly in the same direction, both paying little attention to the other.

  Shuffling along with the high and low of Fenest – of all the realms, really – Cora remembered why she hated elections: Casker mothers with babes on their hips alongside Perlish two-penny boys, Fenestirans in polished shoes queueing alongside those of the city who did the shining. The great equaliser, it was, and no one seemed too comfortable with that – not least Cora.

  She felt more on edge this election than she had in the previous ones. With Ento’s killer still at large, she couldn’t let her guard down, whether she was in a lonely alley or jostling in a crowd. Fenest was a sprawling city, and the killer could be anywhere, could be close too, watching the case falter. It irked her that the constant stories in the pennysheets made that likely, wherever the killer was hiding. A woman stumbled into Cora’s hip, mumbled a curse. Elections. The only good crowd was a ring-side crowd, with eyes only for the numbers and hands too busy clutching slips to cause trouble.

  At last she and Finnuc reached the end of the road proper, marked by a line of barrels and a handful of bored-looking constables from another division, and they came out onto a cobbled waterfront.

  ‘Wait, I know this place,’ Cora said.

  ‘After today, everyone will know it.’

  ‘No, I mean from before.’

  She had walked it as part of her beat, back when she was in uniform. But now it was almost unrecognisable. The tall buildings opposite the water had been transformed: gone were the boarded-up doors and shutters, the broken windows and weeds sprouting from cracks. Everything looked… if not clean, then fixed, or whole. Not new, but no longer old – not in the way she knew it. She shuddered at the strangeness of it, at the feeling that part of her past had been scrubbed away and replaced by gold-lettered shopfronts and eateries.

  ‘Hungry?’ he said.

  She hadn’t been. But as they approached the numerous stalls that were packed between the buildings she caught some of the smells and flavours and her stomach groaned. She’d not bothered with breakfast.

  Finnuc stopped beside a roaring fire pit. A blackened piglet was turned on a spit by a young Wayward woman who rained spices on the flesh. At the next stall, huge sinta cakes were carved and handed out to a never-ending reaching of hands. Stew pots bubbled with bright colours – orange, red, yellow – flanked by towers of Seeder-bread. Holens and medlars and all manner of things from the south jostled alongside cheese and meats from the north; about as comfortable in each other’s company as their producers were. But they all came together here and now, in Fenest for the election.

  Beyond, through the tall windows of once abandoned warehouses, Cora caught glimpses of tables and chairs packed with people. A Rustan stood berating her companion, gesticulating with a fork gripped by a half-metal hand. At another window two Caskers stared at the river, their expressions unreadable. Around them everyone was eating, arguing and speculating. A fair amount of which would concern what the Casker Hook meant for the Casker story.

  She and Finnuc took their meat and bread, wrapped in old pennysheets, and moved back into the crowd. She was idly trying to make out the headline now smeared in grease when, as if it were the theme of the day, the old collided with the new.

  ‘Caskers bag a body! Get the story here, folks.’

  Cora recognised the deep voice that carried above the crowd. Recognised why there was something unnerving about it, which was even then making Finnuc frown.

  Marcus, the pennysheet girl, darted here and there as she rushed to meet the hands going up. Between transactions she belted out more baritone calls of story, of headline, of excitement. As she reached a would-be buyer another pennysheet girl appeared. She punched Marcus full in the gut, and then neatly stepped in front of her groaning, prone competitor.

  ‘Casker tale catching! All signs point to plague! Who wants it? Who wants it?’

  Marcus recovered enough to kick the other girl’s feet out from under her and the two wrestled on the cobbles. The shrill peevishness of a whistle started and within moments a squarely-built constable was pulling the girls apart by their collars.

  Grumbling, Cora made her way over, leaving a bemused Finnuc behind.

  ‘I’ll take that one,’ she said, pointing at Marcus.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ the constable said, raising an eyebrow.

  Cora fumbled around in her pocket, eventually producing her badge.

  ‘Bernswick?’ the constable said with a sneer. ‘What’s this to you? Besides, they all got orders not to cause any disturbance today.’

  ‘I ain’t disturbing no one!’ Marcus shouted, and spat at the other girl. ‘Just selling, that’s all, and she come over here and starts on me. I ain’t eaten, I ain’t slept.’

  ‘Selling it to the Poet, she is!’ the girl said. She took a swipe at Marcus and missed, swinging into the bulky torso of the constable instead.

  ‘This one owes me,’ Cora said.

  ‘Maybe she owes me too?’

  Cora stepped close to the man, close enough to smell his rancid breath over the cooking pots, and whispered in his ear. His eyes bulged and then he promptly dropped Marcus.

  ‘It’s clear who the problem is. C’mon you,’ the constable said to the other girl. ‘Stop wriggling or I’ll drop you in the Stave. And all that paper won’t help with floating.’ He dragged the pennysheet girl away through the press of people.

  Marcus dusted herself down, much good it did her.

  ‘Now you do owe me,’ Cora said.

  ‘Take it in ’sheets?’

  Before Cora could answer, a boy barged past her and threw an armload of pennysheets at Marcus, who was bowled back to the ground by their weight. The boy raced off without a word and Marcus wearily got to her feet again. She hefted the new ’sheets more securely in her arms.

  Cora saw the headline. ‘Marcus, don’t—’

  But the roar was out before she could clamp Marcus’ mouth shut.

  ‘Constabulary no closer to killer! Storytellers at risk. Read it here.’ And the girl was off again, hurrying to meet the raised hands.

  ‘What did you say to that flatfoot?’ Finnuc said, joining her. ‘Never seen one look so scared.’

  ‘I told him I knew every debt-collector this side of the Tear.’

  ‘And he believed that?’

  ‘Of course he did. It’s true.’

  *

>   They joined what Cora assumed was the queue for the Hook. Finnuc seemed to know what he was about, and made easy conversation between mouthfuls of Wayward pork as they shuffled forward every few minutes or so. He was quite taken with Marcus, who could still be heard touting her wares, and suggested the girl was one of Cora’s ‘informants’. She decided the lie wasn’t worth the effort to convince him otherwise.

  ‘I’m not waiting around here,’ she muttered. ‘Come on.’ She strode towards the head of the queue, ignoring the tuts and murmurs of those she passed.

  People in the purple uniform of the Commission were stationed at intervals along the line. One of them, a young man, stopped her before she reached the front. Cora showed him her badge. It seemed to be a morning for it.

  ‘Bernswick division,’ she said, and made to pass.

  He put a hand on her arm – not a grab so much as unarguable firmness.

  ‘Commission policy is to manage numbers with a queue system,’ he said.

  Cora shook him off. ‘This is an official matter.’

  ‘No exceptions, I’m afraid.’ He gave her a tight smile. ‘If you wouldn’t mind returning to your friend there.’

  She turned: Finnuc hadn’t followed her. He knew better, she guessed, but her blood was up now.

  ‘Are you telling me,’ she said loudly, ‘that the Commission’s authority is superior to that of the police?’

  ‘We all work for the Commission, Detective. But the election is a matter for the Office of Electoral Affairs. We have our orders. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘I’m not sure I do.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to undermine the election in any way, would you, Detective? I’m sure your commanding officer wouldn’t be too pleased to hear of that. Who is it at Bernswick I should report you to?’

  Cora looked at the head of the queue, then back at him. He smiled.

  She marched back down to Finnuc.

  ‘Problems?’ he said.

  ‘Only the way the world’s run.’

  *

  By the time they reached the front of the queue, her anger had cooled. Finnuc’s constant talking helped. He was still talking when they stepped onto a gangway. It was wide and solid and about as permanent as anything under the Audience, but it was still a gangway.